President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday called upon institutions of higher learning to nurture innovation for the benefit of the common man, adding that research pursuits help redefine the frontiers of a discipline.
“Our institutes of higher learning must take up issues relevant to their social and economic context for in-depth research,” the President said while speaking at 36th annual convocation of Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad.He pointed out that ISM is located in a region rich in scarce mineral resources. “So, this Institute should concentrate on developing technologies that increases the efficiency of resource extraction,” he added.
On this occasion, degrees were conferred on 1106 students including 66 PhD, 162 M Tech., 29 M. Phil, 55 MBA, 101 M. Sc. Tech., 102 M Sc., 24 Integrated M Sc. 10 Integrated M Tech., 43 Dual Degree and 498 B Tech.Giving a wake-up call to the students, Mukherjee said ISM should pay heed to introducing resource-conserving industrial processes as that would be a key step in the direction of sustainable development.
Welcoming the ISM’s efforts to strengthen interaction and collaboration with different higher educational institutions, including foreign institutions Mukherjee said: “I am happy to know that in recent years, ISM played a pivotal role in teaching under-graduate students of Afghanistan and in providing continuing education to a large number of government and industry professionals from countries in Asia and Africa”.
The President also stressed on the need of strengthening the higher education and its quality across the country.